22-05-2025
Boston is notorious for traffic delays. Here's how Google has helped change that
Last year, with Boston ranked among the world's worst cities for traffic delays, local officials partnered with Google in hopes that its mapping and artificial intelligence software could help untangle the city streets.
The results are encouraging, according to data the city unveiled Thursday, enough so that the program is expanding.
Officials have already used Google data and analytics at more than 100 intersections across the city to retime traffic signals to better match traffic flow. This has led to an average 20% drop in vehicles unnecessarily stopped at those lights, Mayor Michelle Wu's office said.
For example, at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Richmond Street, next to Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park in the North End, the improvements reduced traffic delays by 21%, the city said. At the corner of Beacham Street and Maffa Way in Charlestown, delays dropped 24%.
The two intersections saw vehicles unnecessarily stopping roughly a third less often — among the clearest improvements citywide — after officials better coordinated the traffic signals with others nearby, the mayor's office said.
Boston is one of two U.S. cities, along with Seattle, and 18 worldwide, participating in the Google program, known as Project Green Light.
Since partnering with Boston in February 2024, the program has analyzed data from hundreds of city intersections with traffic signals.
'It has been a highly effective tool,' Boston Chief of Streets Jascha Franklin-Hodge said in a statement Thursday. City officials look forward to expanding the traffic analysis to additional intersections, he added.
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'Small traffic hotspots from mistimed signals or curbside issues' are often the cause of more expansive congestion, Wu said last year when city officials announced the partnership with Google. 'Targeting these micro spots goes a long way.'
The city has used Google's AI-driven recommendations to adjust traffic signals at 114 especially congested intersections across 20 neighborhoods.
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The traffic analysis from Google allows Boston's Traffic Management Center to synchronize traffic signals at nearby intersections or change 'green time' between lights to match demand, the mayor's office said. That means 'drivers now spend less time waiting through multiple signal cycles, both reducing how often they are starting and stopping driving and reducing overall traffic delays.'
The city found a 13.5% reduction in traffic delays at intersections where it implemented the program's recommendations, with some locations improving by as much as 24%.
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An added benefit, the city said, was the reduced environmental impact of cars idling in traffic. Over a year, vehicles could collectively save, on average, an estimated 4,000 gallons of fuel at each adjusted traffic signal.
At Beacham Street and Maffa Way in Charlestown, one of the intersections that benefited most from Google's analytics, drivers could collectively save up to 14,000 gallons of fuel annually.
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Read the original article on MassLive.
